People - friends, family members, work colleagues, salespeople - lie to us all the time. Daily, hourly, constantly. None of us is immune, and all of us are victims. According to studies by several different researchers, most of us encounter nearly 200 lies a day. Now there’s something we can do about it. Liespotting links three disciplines - facial recognition training, interrogation training, and a comprehensive survey of research in the field - into a specialized body of information developed specifically to help business leaders detect deception....

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People - friends, family members, work colleagues, salespeople - lie to us all the time. Daily, hourly, constantly. None of us is immune, and all of us are victims. According to studies by several different researchers, most of us encounter nearly 200 lies a day. Now there’s something we can do about it. Liespotting links three disciplines - facial recognition training, interrogation training, and a comprehensive survey of research in the field - into a specialized body of information developed specifically to help business leaders detect deception and get the information they need to successfully conduct their most important interactions and transactions.

Some of the nation's leading business executives have learned to use these methods to root out lies in high stakes situations. Liespotting for the first time brings years of knowledge - previously found only in the intelligence community, police training academies, and universities - into the corporate boardroom, the manager's meeting, the job interview, the legal proceeding, and the deal negotiation.

A very long introduction and lots of views about when and where lies are okay and not okay. Lots of stories about people being lied to and how they handled it. A whole chapter on how a company might have a "trust audit" done by professionals. A chapter on having a group of people that give you advice.

It is more of a book that would help you track down other resources that, might, tell you how to spot lies.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

I could not be more disappointed in this book. In short the interesting part of the book was filled with contradictions.

A light read of the book will appear informative, but the problem occurs when over several chapters the information on how to spot a lie is contradicted time and time again.

Later in the book the author reviews the need of businesses to have trained consultants conduct deception audits. I was left with the impression that the entire purpose of the book was so that the author could sell or recommend such services by saying "look I wrote the book on how to spot a lie"

I understand how some readers (especially small and medium business owners) might love the concept of being able to tell, or having a consultant tell them when someone is lying to them. However this book appears to me as dangerously painting a desire to know how to tell if someone is deceiving you, with a science.

If you are interested in exploring the subject I would recommend that you read."What Every BODY is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide"

According to Pamela Meyer each person, on average, is subject to 200 lies - a day. I was astounded – I don’t see 200 people a day. Some days, I only see my family and my co-workers in the small branch office I work at.

Where are the lies? I started thinking about it: it happens when several of my Facebook friends ask to “Add my birthday.” They’ve been duped by an advertiser seeking personal information, and it gets passed along. The lies are in the ads I get to enlarge a certain body part. The products can’t work – I don’t even have the requisite body part. The lies are on CNN, Fox News, during interviews of people later found guilty of horrible crimes. And there are white lies I hear, when I ask my son or daughter how school was, and they say “fine” to deflect me from asking about an Algebra or Physics test they may have tanked. Sometimes, I’ll never find out things weren’t really “fine” – the test turned out well, and I’ll chalk the crankiness caused by stress for teenage hormones.

People lie, and Meyer’s book is a great guideline for realizing when that happens. I am a litigator, and I learned a lot of the techniques she outlines by years of experience. For example, if someone uses the phrase “To tell you the truth,” what comes out next usually isn’t the truth. It might have a little bit of truth, someplace, but it might be a complete fabrication. If someone smirks while testifying, they are lying and expect a judge or jury is too stupid to catch it.

This is a great book, but it's focus is lying in business and commerce. If your looking for knowledge in personal relationships this book has little information. Her delivery and insights are impressive if your using the information for business. I would buy her next audiobook on personal and everyday relationships if she were to write one, but at this point the techniques are of little value to me as I'm not in the commercial world looking for shonky business people.

The beginning of the book provides useful information on spotting lies -- identifying baseline behavior and noting "tells" and cluster of behaviors when a person is lying. It is followed with chapters that diverge somewhat from lie spotting, such as negotiation techniques and conducting a deception audit at work. The information is still useful in that the reader can apply the techniques to build trusting relationships and avoid dishonest people. I think the reason why the book hasn't received higher ratings is because the author's TED Talk and the book description give the impression that this book can help the reader become an expert on spotting lies. It is not case. It provides an overview and basic techniques to practice.

When a book is title Liespotting you expect that the main focus of the book will be about lies right?

Maybe I was expecting too much after reading Joe's Navarro - "what every body is saying" but I was very disappointed.

To start this book make very big claims ,if not absurd ones, like you’ll be able to detect 95% of the lies you are told, or that after only 1 hour of training the principles of the book you be at least 25% better in detecting lies.

According to the book “what every body is saying” even trained FBI agents are no better than a coin toss.The scope of this book is also very narrow – few things about facial expression and about speech nothing about body language.LACK OF FOCUSThe Book is basically divided in 3 parts. The beginning has a lot of interesting but useless content such as statistics of which countries in the world have the biggest liars. The middle is about detecting lies. Unfortunately the part that is supposed to be the main part of the book is full of little tips scattered around which makes really hard to grasp anything useful. And is only about 30% of the whole book.

The last part of the book remains to me a big mystery. Why the author decided to add tips on how to make a convincing presentation, or factors why an employee would be more inclined to cheat on reports or how to conduct an audit. I was expecting something that I can use on my interactions with normal people – I don’t own a company.

CHEAP PSYCHOLOGY AND FLAWED LOGICIn the same way a bad psychologist might want to use this book to detect liars, someone who read it could prepare and be an undetectable lying machine. This is because of the “tips” the book gives such as –Liars use perfect grammar. You just can’t say if someone do X he is lying.On the overall I would not recommend to skip this one and go straight to the What every body is saying.

Ms. Meyer spends a significant amount of time shouting her own accolades in the beginning of the book, and very little on the actual science of detecting lies. I found myself unable to get into the book with so much self-glorification. The author was light on the science backing up her claims.

Would you be willing to try another book from Pamela Meyer? Why or why not?

It would depend on whether the topic interested me.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

Some really glaring pronunciation mistakes, such as "irrevelant" instead of "irrelevant".Her attempts at altering her voice to read excerpts from other sources sounded like a mom reading a bedtime story to her kids.

What did you take away from Liespotting that you can apply to your work?

I was actually looking for personal level application more than professional.

The general concepts of dissembling are covered but half the book is padding which is both irritating and patronising. If you want to understand the subject start with Paul Ekman's work, this title adds little or nothing to his established work.

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